Search

As I glanced back at her body sprawled in the death grip from what must have been some type of yoga position; I wonder about her family and how her obituary might read. What is this? A book, no – a journal! Fantastic discovery, Dawn says. Snapping me out of wherever it is I have just been. It is surprisingly blood free, so I pick it up and begin to flip through the pages. The last entry is an exact account of all that has occurred thus far in our investigation. It is titled: “A Dream 07/01/1995”. Today is July 25, 1995. She is a poet. For some reason I am not startled by this information. It only serves to make me curious enough to read the rest of the book. I find another entry marked 07/21/1995 – “Obituaries”. I am beginning to feel a little distressed, but I keep my calm and read on. She wishes in the event of her death at her obituary read as follows:

“The last true dreamer died today. Survived by the rest of her family. She was a self-proclaimed child of the night, saver of small fortunes, does of kind and noble deeds, a loving sister, daughter and niece. She was a poetess who now resides in the land of the muses. She loved passionately and lived fully. When she was awake. She once was lost, but now she is found. May the lord have mercy on her soul.”

Not a bad idea any more to write your own obituary. The papers print such a dismal account of all the day’s news. It has to be a difficult job. The last rights of so and so. Funeral services to be held at blank and keeping track of all those names. She says tragedy takes precedence over happiness. Where on earth is that sweet voice coming from? I feel like I am going mad with all this new prose acting up in my head. Dawn doesn’t even notice as I fall back against the stone wall that once held her shadow and slide spastically if not slowly to the cool, damp earth.

My conscience plays tricks on me. The aquarium light is off, yet the fish swim on. I will sleep. Allusion is pillow. The haunting pages of a young woman’s journal my security blanket. Dreams of youth, my night light. She seeks shelter in a hollow house, in a frameless bed. My health is failing. She is beginning to die a solitary death in a white dress in a deep forest. The flowers of my childhood are tangled in her hair. I dread the feeling of her fingers—stiff and lifeless against the living world. My soul a silhouette. My dream of a perfect being shot down by the whims of society. Efforts gained and lost again. There was a time when I was truly happy and then I peered into the stained glass window and I witnessed reality. It impressed myself upon me stretching my skin until I thought, I am an old woman, mother of no child at 18 years old my body hates me. My brain wants to sleep forever and my hands want to speak of the pain of being. Of being an old young woman and living, and living and living.

Dawn taps me on the shoulder, ever mindful of our duties at the crime scene. She cheerfully reminds me that I am holding elutriated evidence with ungloved hands. I am in awe, completely and utterly shocked by what I am experiencing but I do not want to miss a minute of it. So, I put on some rubber gloves that make my hands reek for the rest of the day and continue with my private investigations.

So far, I have gathered that she is a seriously lonely girl, intensely sensitive to her environment, slightly paranoid and definitely intelligent. Her entire life is mapped out in this one book; seemingly for the singular purpose of entertaining friends and lovers or her younger sisters or herself. She writes of their future with uncertainty and reminds them of the lessons she has learned along the way. I am beginning to feel the guilt of an eavesdropped rating undue credit for a rumor I had not even heard until – Hey, have you heard? The lion swallowed the fly as the spider entered the stadium and the crowd roared.

My ears are hot with the echo of an eerie lullaby I overheard a mother singing to her child in the cemetery. I am alone in what seems to be an ancient Egyptian tomb. How did I get here? From the glyphs on the wall – Isis, Osiris, Horace the hawk I place myself in the Valley of the Kings. It is cool and dry and the sweat under my arms gives me a chill. There is a resonance to this place although I have a clue to its source. The room is carved in solid rock and I feel I am standing on the dust of the ages. This place has been preserved for over 5,000 years, yet it is far from deserted. A nubile energy permeates the air and fills my head with grand delusional possibilities.

I am queen of all I see, ruler indubitably. On my head a crown of dogwood carved in precious ruby, emerald and diamond gemstone. Oh! My virtuosity. My manhood! Gone in an instant. What is this? Some new illness? I can only hope. My head is filled with a strange apathy. I am drowning in a pool of blood that seeps up through the soles of my shoes into the hem of my pant legs.

The confrontation. In her breathless trance I feel that I am becoming a shadow on the wall. I am volumizing – my insides fading out, while my body remains solid and a melody still flowing from her fingers. I open my eyes and exclaim, I felt myself disappearing! The person at my side laughs as if I am making a joke. She recites this poem to me:

The ceremony

Begins

As I gather supplies

For my journey

Over my shoulder

A flute made of silver

To guide me

And serve as protector

Led by the moon

Are my feet marching on

My eyes absorb her brightness

Mindless

Of my destination

Once there

We have a seat and play

The walls surround

Catch sound

Sending it every way and upward

Lovers swoon

At my sorrowful tune

While still others seem disturbed

Until finally I am desserted

Left alone to play a wind song for the birds of

Night and you

Have come to join me

I found her in a pool of her own blood. A bullet through her brain. Another drive-by shooting? Perhaps. Kids these days are so paranoid they probably thought she was planning to open fire with a small silver cannon. Anyway, no one saw the tire tracks inside the court until Dawn arrived and pointed them out to us. She had a special interest in the case. We at the precinct found her forte in seemingly meaningless crimes and especially murder, well – exploitable. I had to grin when I realized the pun I’d made in connection with the blood spattered sheet music spread all around the girl. It seemed she wouldn’t be around for a second refrain. I was just trying to make out some notes when Dawn explained the tracks were that of a motorcycle driven by a heavy set man in his early thirties. She had determined all of this from the width and pattern of the tire tracks – nothing more. It was the conservative, yet seasoned way he made his way around the small court that had her convinced the man who murdered this small, now silent angel was no kid.

The first time she played the silver flute she felt a surge of energy and pure emotion, the likes of which she had never experienced before. It was the first time she felt a way “out” or a way in depending on how you look at it without the aid of hallucinogens. It was so clean. She couldn’t get enough. She played for hours never looking up to acknowledge the people around her much less eat or drink. It was as if the flute played itself and she was naught but the air it took to breathe. The keys were soft and soundless under her fingers; effortlessly gauging the rhythm of her song. She played a furious Hungarian sweep without fail and felt herself a virtuoso. Then a melancholy “Greensleeves” found her lips and she fell deep into the spell of the first octave of that seductive minor scale.

Far away from her so-called friends, her family, and alone with this music an invisible man became her mentor. Some girls grew up believing in a Prince Charming. Her fantasy was created by books. In particular, books given to her by an influential lover whom she imagined was grooming her for their future together. Part suffering writer, part vampire, part seductive intellectual pedophile and part lesbian poet – he introduced her to the night, to the moon and to the power of melody. He could have been her phantom had she known such a thing as that existed.

“Ah, Greensleeves now farewell adieu

To g-d I pray to prosper thee

For I am still your lover true

Come once again and love me.”

It is during the week of the big moon now seven years and a nine-month trip to a foreign country later that she makes her trek to the tombs. It’s really just a duplex racquetball court in the local park that produces ethereal acoustic effects. She chooses this time with the knowledge that the light of her moon will be brightest now. Just off center in the sky. Between the hours of 12 a.m. and 3 a.m. that giant orb is her lantern and her companion. She likes to say that porthole is open while human shadows are cast directly and nevermore. It is quite a dangerous thing to traipse about in the light of street lamp, yet in the beams of moonlight one is free to roam peacefully without fear of being anything but blue.

She is a petite thing. Her once mousy brown auburn hair hangs to her waist, tied back with a fresh twig she has just plucked from an olive tree. She feels this is appropriate hair accessory for the moment. She believe her thick, untamed eyebrows to be her best feature as they frame her fiery green eyes and give a fiendishly demonic finish to her round face. People say she looks beautiful when she smiles. Probably because it’s such a rare occurrence. At any rate, she flashes her piercing fangs with pride. The dentist calls them a cosmetic defect but she’s under the impression that being defective is better than being normal at this point in her almost adulthood. Being a child of the night keeps her skin pale and ever so soft. She secretly wishes to be bronzed when she spots a fine desert specimen of womanliness but the smell of burning leather always sends her running for the safety of the shadows. The sun kills!

In the privacy of her own private tomb, not more than 500 yards from the nearest intersection, she prepares “The Music of the Night”. She’s older now and has been officially inducted into the world of Broadway musical numbers, opera and ballet. She begins with this song ritually in search of the phantom she’s absolutely certain exists now though she knew nothing of the sort only a few short years ago. She ends with her own version of tele-communication – a high-pitched trilling which usually sent the neighborhood hounds into a frenzy but did little for humans unlike herself.

She believes sometimes in the great powers of the luminescence surrounding her. Bestowing upon herself the ability to make contact or to send a secret message to a faraway lover. She finds her inner light to be brightest of all. Mostly, she’s just blowing the day away, for the night is her sanctuary. The place where she can shine without fear of blinding. To a passer-by some of her found sounds might even be a bit annoying.

She never actually intends to meet anyone here. But the effects of the moon and her enchanting music have induced more than a few memorable encounters. Tonight, she plays a special tune in honor of the full moon. When the sky turns midnight blue and the sidewalk glows and it’s colder than it’s ever been she says, the porthole is open. The porthole in her tomb is the gateway to dimensions lesser in number and higher in tune. To rest and to perform the calling, she sends all visitors to flee. Inviting only one to join her, she does not feel the cold and she is not afraid.

This is the story of a young woman who discovers that the mystery of life lies not in death but in the desire to live.

Like most people her age, she is deeply depressed by the current standard of living ie. those established by mainstream society to achieve the “American Dream”. Or maybe she is just the laziest sun ever risen. She feels the nineties have nothing offer. Money means debt in her middle class world of woe. She sighs, thinking of time past and wishes for a more romantic age. In these pages you will travel with her on her quest for a reason to exist, however far from suicidal she believes herself to be.

Life is a series of ironic jokes and disappointments to her. It is difficult to decide whether she should laugh or cry most of the time. Death is the worst joke of them all. Hell is reserved for people stuck on earth and heaven is what you make it. This is a mystery.

The Silver flute gave her confidence and put a song on her lips and she strode toward her favorite midnight meeting place. The neighborhood was not such that young women like her should feel secure, but she did. In fact, she felt safest in the middle of the road because if it was anybody’s territory – it was hers. Besides, a good solid silver flute hung over her right shoulder to be wielded as a weapon if ever she came upon trouble.

Not many things in her life gave her such a feeling of self-possession. At the age of 21, she was constantly reminding herself of reality. In high school she thought herself a loner in the midst of the popular crowd. An entire existence was birthed for her then, along with its twin—a passionate nature that would cause her much grief. She led her life as an Miller-Burroughs inspired adventure of the seediest kind. Her classmates were often under the impression she was stoned and she did nothing to disway them. Perhaps she felt her cover was better kept under a cloak of narcotic bliss otherwise known as sheer stupidity.

Furthest from the truth is what she shared with those she thought to be below her because the truth is we come from people much, much better than we are now. Or so her devastatingly shameful parents explained to her when she came home high again on their example, but all parents are equally disappointing to their teenage children. It wasn’t that her mother and father weren’t good to her. They gave her everything she ever asked for. She was the only girl in her class with both of her original parents which has to count for something. The house was nice and mom always kept a beautiful garden in the front yard perfect for picking flowers for the teacher on the way to school.

It must have been a stigma – too much television and not enough veggies. She once smashed a roach on the forest green and gold shag carpet in her room and before she could find the nerve to pick it up and throw it away there were a thousand-trillion baby roaches feasting away on their own mother. Soon after, she packed up her Barbies and decided to move.

Her flute had been a gift from a friend of the family. Upon hearing her play he told her he could not keep such a fine, expensive instrument for himself – a mere novice. Yeah, he talked like that. But he was cool and he rode a Harley so it wasn’t like he was gay or anything and even if he was, well hell that would be cool too because he was big. Like, I’ll kick your ass just for looking at me sideways big thought I’m certain he never had to raise a hand because one look would have been enough.